


my lover, my lover

by notjodieyet



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, Polyamory, Thrissyrose (Mentioned), because i will, like. do i have to make all the missyrose content myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25868338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notjodieyet/pseuds/notjodieyet
Summary: morning musings and gentle, emotional angst between missy & rose.
Relationships: Missy/Rose Tyler, The Master (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	my lover, my lover

Rose woke slowly, as she often did in the TARDIS. There were no windows or curtains for the sunlight to stream through; no sunlight at all, for that matter. No shouting outside as the neighborhood boys finished their latest game of basketball or football or extreme jump rope. No Jackie Tyler to shake her awake for an event or for work or to do the dishes. Even the Doctor had stopped waking her up.  _ “I like to see you asleep,” _ she’d said, and then bit her lip.  _ “That sounds creepy. I mean… I don’t want to interrupt you.” _

Rose appreciated it. She loved sleeping in, loved sinking into the pillows and silk sheets of the Doctor’s bed, loved the comforting morning whirring of the TARDIS’s various engines and gears before it started on its proper noises of the day. The Doctor had long since left the room, most likely for a science project or her most recent ship repairs, and Rose smiled to imagine her pressing the gentlest of kisses to Rose’s forehead as she slept. 

Her eyes drifted open, and scanned the room on reflex. There was the Doctor’s coat, thrown over the desk chair, a plastic caramel wrapper fallen out of one of its pockets. There was the bookshelf, with its multilingual literary offerings. There was the map of a planet Rose didn’t recognize, printed with solid black ink on yellowing paper, that she had spent an age poring over and discovering tiny quirks and oddities an Earth map would never sport. There was Rose’s poster of David Bowie, tacked up to the wall. 

And there was the sleeping Time Lady Rose had grown used to seeing next to her daily, her nightgown white and flimsy, one delicate hand laid dramatically over her breast, the other thrown across the blankets. Her hair was wild and free, spreading itself with curls and waves over her pillow as if searching for a different land altogether. Missy’s lips parted, and she murmured an unintelligible word in Gallifreyan.

(Rose knew some Gallifreyan. It was impossible not to, not after living for years after years with one Time Lord and then another. She’d set off to learn some to impress the Doctor after they’d first started dating, although her mind was twisted into knots by the curliques and lines of their script. Her knowledge of the written language was barely enough to muddle through a picture book, if there had been any Gallifreyan picture books. Her knowledge of the spoken language was marginally better. It consisted of swear words and terms of endearment and idioms that sounded made-up.)

She reached out to touch Missy gently, running her fingertip down the woman’s nose. Missy didn’t stir. Rose was used to the casual unfamiliarity of the Doctor’s alien features: her double heartbeats, her offhand comments, her body temperature, the strange color of her blood. Missy was different. She often seemed entirely human, if a little strange, and that made it all the more unsettling when she let her guard drop. She had taught Rose a very old Gallifreyan lullaby a couple of weeks ago, one that relied on your voice and an instrument that looked like an accordion and a guitar’s love child. 

The words hadn’t made sense to Rose whatsoever, but the melody was nice. She hummed the melody now and sought for the refrain in the back of her mind:  _ My lover, my lover, has gone away / my lover, my lover, she’s sailed away. / Into the dark and the reach of the stars / my lover, my lover, so very far. _

_ “It rhymes in English,” _ Rose had said.

_ “No,” _ said Missy.  _ “I made it rhyme.” _

Missy cracked an eyelid open, examining Rose with a single blue iris. She looked so very different without her makeup and her purple dress and her heels and brooch and hair all tight. She was the same  _ person, _ of course, with the same thin lips and the same harsh cheekbones, there was simply a difference between the presentable lady she made herself up to be and the half-asleep Gallifreyan woman lying in bed less than an arms-breadth away from Rose. 

She closed her eye and settled deeper into the blanket. Rose’s finger crept away from her nose to trace the line of Missy’s lips, so gently she doubted Missy could even feel the touch. “Good morning,” Rose whispered.

“Good morning,” said Missy. Her hand drifted up to cover Rose’s, her delicate fingers on Rose’s sturdier ones. “The Doctor is gone, isn’t she?” It was a casual question, although Rose thought she could hear a hint of sadness, expectation, in Missy’s voice. She had told Rose, once, in a fit of drunken anger, about the Doctor’s exit from Gallifrey, before collapsing on the floor in a heap of sniffles and wine-scented breath. 

“Yes. Just to the bridge, I think. I can text her. If you like.” Rose rolled over, tried to find her telephone on the nightstand, her hand ripping away from Missy’s sweet grasp to grope at empty air. “Give me a second. Give me a second, and I can text her. Everything’s all right.”

She felt someone tug her away, hold her tight. “No need,” said Missy, with a faint, audible smile. Her lips roved across the nape of Rose’s neck. Rose sunk into her embrace, thinking about lovers and the reach of the stars.

(She thought about Mickey Smith. She thought about his voice, tumbling over the Gallifreyan syllables, alone in the dark of his flat.  _ “My lover, my lover.” _ )

(Rose had been a foolish girl in love. She had told herself that, as she lay awake in the dark, a sheen of guilty sweat coating her forehead. Back when everything confused her. Back when the Doctor was a man in a leather jacket, and Rose’s heart fluttered too much when he held her hand.  _ I was a foolish girl in love _ .)

(It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t excuse anything.)

( _ “It’s okay,” _ Mickey had said, years ago, when Rose had confronted him about it, long after she should have. He’d told her that he was gay. Rose didn’t think that changed anything.  _ “It’s — it’s not okay, I mean. I don’t know. It can be.” _ ) 

(It was as okay as it could be, these days. She thought about him, sometimes. Her first real love. The first person she’d considered spending the rest of her days with. They’d been lousy days, back then, but they were nice with Mickey Smith.) 

Rose hummed those bars, absentmindedly. She wondered if Missy had written the song herself, altered the lyrics, after the Doctor left her. She wondered if Missy was angry, still, or if all those feelings had solidified in a tiny rock at the bottom of her hearts that melted sometimes without warning. She wondered if that kind of heartbreak was really enough to drive Missy to kill, or if it had been something else, a million little things that all added up into a violent, lethal explosion.

“You were talking in your sleep,” said Rose. She didn’t dare try to pronounce the looping sounds of high Gallifreyan — her tongue was bound to stumble and embarrass her. “Good dreams, I hope?”

Missy didn’t answer. Her hand found its way around Rose’s side and slipped into her shirt to rest on her ribcage, as if it would distract her from caring. (Maybe that was her old tactic with the Doctor, to say: no talking, only touching). 

“Bad dreams?” muttered Rose. 

“Shall we go back to sleep?” said Missy, picking up the tune Rose had been murmuring, singing the proper words in Gallifreyan.  _ My lover, my lover, has gone away. _

“All right.”

_ My lover, my lover, she’s sailed away. _

Missy pressed her nose into Rose’s hair. Rose smiled softly. 

_ Into the dark and the reach of the stars.  _

“Sleep well, darling,” said Missy. 

_ My lover, my lover, so very far.  _


End file.
